The Death of Bart Simpson? (from Issue 9)

Sweet scented smoke fills the air.

Jeremy and his friends watch it rise.

“How did the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles pay for their pizza?” the friend who likes to call himself Sid asks.

“And didn’t anyone ever notice that there were giant turtles living in New York’s sewers?” adds Christine in a slurred voice.

Jeremy shakes his head, “No, no, no…” He giggles. “You see, the Ninja Turtles were invisible to the naked eye.”

His friends look confused.

“What about April O’Neal? She could see them.”

“She wore contact lenses!” At this, they all shriek with irrepressible laughter.

Suddenly, Jeremy looks up. “How come the Simpsons are yellow?” he asks.

They all sit quietly, contemplating the Simpsons, or more specifically, Bart Simpson, an important figure of their generation.

“Maybe they all have jaundice,” Claudia, another friend, suggests.

“Yeah…” Stoned sarcasm creeps into Sid’s voice “The entire city of Springfield has jaundice.”

Christine shrugs. “Well they are based around a nuclear power plant.”

Jeremy looks sad. He sighs heavily and lights up another joint. The others stare at him with melodramatic concern.

“I miss Bart,” he tells them. “Don’t you remember when The Simpsons first came on T.V. and we were all in fourth grade?”

Claudia nods. “Yeah man, we could all relate to him, he was totally cool.”

The group fall into silence once more as they realise that while they have all grown up, got I.Ds and left school, Bart is still in fourth grade.

He is an immortal figure, trapped, in a cartoon child’s body. Perpetually left behind.

He presses himself up against the television black screen, patiently waiting for the next generation of kids to laugh at his pranks and mimic his catch-phrases.

But they are all hooked on South Park.